


Just Friends

by CynicallySmitten



Category: Vampire Diaries
Genre: F/M, OTP or BrOTP, Possibly Unrequited Love, but kinda not, losing friends like house keys, minor Delena
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-10
Updated: 2014-11-10
Packaged: 2018-02-24 20:02:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2594666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CynicallySmitten/pseuds/CynicallySmitten
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She tells herself that he's her friend. She's loyal to her friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Friends

**Author's Note:**

> (Written pre-Rose's death, not that I didn't know it was coming.)

The feelings are there, even if she won't show it. The emotion in her runs deep, giving her home and intrigue and the things she's gone without for a long time. She feels regret, but she pushed it aside. She smiles in a coquettish way and she tells him the term friends describes them only loosely.

She's better than this - loving a man who loves another woman - and she tells him so.

She just wishes she could tell her heart so, too.

He watches Elena from afar, his eyes soft. Rose feels jealousy singeing her skin like fire. It's nothing she can't bottle up, repress until it's untapped anger, ready to be unleashed. She wants to run now; now, she wonders what's keeping her here. She wonders - when she's scared and jealous and grieving - why isn't she running now?

She tells herself that he's her friend. She's _loyal_ to her friends.

This thought brings Trevor to mind and those pangs of grief and anger hit her like a wave of rebellion. She loses friends like most people lose house keys: often and at the worst of times.

She won't lose Damon. The sentence feels wear on her older, much more perceptive tongue. One day, she'll lose him too. She'll lose him to death. She'll lose him to Elena. She'll be alone again, and soon. She won't say it, but that scares her more than Klaus ever could.

She tells him she'll help him too. She'll help him with Elena, saving her from a fate Katherine herself chose death over. She said she'd help him with _anything_ Elena. When he fucks her, she wonders whether it's her promises that will lead her to her death. She wonders when she'll run out of reckless friends and finally be done with it all.

This is what she meant by turning off those emotions.

You just can't. You can keep them hidden like secrets, covered by distraction, but they're there all the same.

"I'm gonna stay and help you."

That werewolf bite should have killed her. She takes large amounts of alcohol in every sip, sitting next to him quietly. She thinks it will kill her, eventually. She sees her death in the most dramatic fashion. When she looks into those gorgeous blue eyes, sees a semblance of emotion, caring - depth - in them. She sees her death in blood and screams.

She nearly laughs when he tells her he thinks he likes her.

She knows death isn't that far away, and it won't forgive the heart's weaknesses.


End file.
